Career
Proto worked as a double bassist and composer-in-residence with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1966 to 1997. The orchestra premiered over 25 new works including concertos and solo works for violin, cello, double bass, clarinet, trumpet, tuba and percussion. He also composed and arranged music for Young People's and Pops concerts including Casey at the Bat—an American Folk Tale for Narrator and Orchestra and A Carmen Fantasy for Trumpet and Orchestra.
Between 1982 and 1989, Proto was a Synclavier artist. He composed works in different genres both with and for the system, the most notable being the Dialogue for Synclavier and Orchestra, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and conducted by then music director Michael Gielen. His chamber music work, The Death of Desdemona for Double Bass and Synclavier, is part of the double bass repertoire.
Proto is among the most prolific composers of music for the double bass. His output includes 7 works with orchestra and over 30 solo and chamber music works. He has also composed extensively for the violin, viola and clarinet. His 2007 CD/DVD Bridges - Eddie Daniels plays the music of Frank Proto consisting of a series of works written for clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Proto's 30-year collaboration with the French/Syrian virtuoso Francois Rabbath has resulted in 5 works for double bass and orchestra.
As a solo double bassist Proto has been widely recorded in an ongoing series of his chamber works by Red Mark Records.
In 2010, Proto's boxing opera Shadowboxer , based on the life of Joe Louis—libretto by John Chenault, directed by Leon Major—was given its premiere by the University of Maryland Opera Studio.
The double bass, also known simply as the bass, amongst other names, is the largest and, therefore, lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
François Rabbath is a contemporary French double-bass virtuoso, soloist, and composer.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Nigel Keay is a New Zealand composer. He has been a freelance musician since 1983 working as a composer, violist, and violin teacher. Nigel Keay has held the following composer residencies: Mozart Fellowship, University of Otago 1986 and 1987, Nelson School of Music 1988 and 89, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra 1995.
Alexis Fernand Félix Jean Rivier was a French composer of classical music in the neoclassical style.
David Earl is a South African composer and pianist. He was educated at Rondebosch Boys' High School. He made his professional debut at the age of sixteen when he broadcast Bach, Chopin and Chabrier on the SABC. In 1968, he performed Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No 1 with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. In 1971, he moved to London where he studied at Trinity College of Music. He studied under Jacob Kaletsky and Richard Arnell. After a live début broadcast recital on BBC Radio 3 in 1974, his first recital at Wigmore Hall was reported as "stylish and powerful" by The Times. In 1975, he was selected as one of the Young Musicians of the Year by the Greater London Arts Association. He also won first prize in the 1976 SABC Piano Competition. He was described by The Daily Telegraph as having "remarkable gifts of style, technical mastery and artistry". He made his début as a composer in the 1977 when he premiered his own Piano Suite No 1 Mosaics at Wigmore Hall. His concerto repertoire includes the Viennese classics, many from the nineteenth century, and amongst those from the 20th, the piano concertos of Arthur Bliss and John Joubert, both of which he studied with the composers. Conductors he has appeared with include Hugo Rignold, Maurice Handford, Piero Gamba and Christian Badea.
Lior Navok is an Israeli classical composer, conductor and pianist. He was born in Tel Aviv. His music has been performed internationally by orchestras and ensembles including the Oper Frankfurt, Nuernberg Opera, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. Amongst the awards he has received are those from the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He has also received awards from the Fromm Music Foundation, Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, and Israel Prime Minister Award. In 2004, he was one of seven composers awarded commissions for new musical works by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation.
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
Gary Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002. He currently teaches on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.
Michael Schelle, born January 22, 1950, in Philadelphia, is a composer of contemporary concert music. He is also a performer, conductor, author, and teacher.
Svante Henryson is a composer, cellist, bass guitarist and double bassist, active within jazz, classical music, and hard rock.
Thierry Joseph-Louis Escaich is a French organist and composer.
Gerhard Schedl was an Austrian composer.
Gene Pritsker is a Russian-born composer, guitarist, rapper and record producer living in New York City. He moved to the United States with his family in 1978 and lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1990 to 1994 where he studied composition with Giampaolo Bracali.
Vladimír Soukup was a Czech post-romantic composer.
